Posted on 04/24/2006 10:44:29 AM PDT by presidio9
Police hunted Monday for chimpanzees that escaped from a Sierra Leone preserve and mauled a group of American and local sightseers, killing one man and injuring four people.
The U.S. Embassy warned Americans against traveling to the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, where the chimps escaped before Sunday's attack on a taxicab.
The Sierra Leonean driver died as the chimps ripped his body apart, and three Americans were treated at a hospital for minor injuries, said Oliver Somasa, a top police official.
Another Sierra Leonean man in the group had his hand amputated after the mauling, Somasa said. U.S. officials had no further comment. The Americans were in Sierra Leone to help build a new embassy building, Somasa said.
Armed police were searching Monday for 27 chimpanzees, Somasa said, while four others had already returned on their own accord to the reserve.
Somosa said it was unclear why the chimps attacked or how they were able to escape.
Chimpanzee attacks are unusual but not unprecedented.
Two chimps that escaped from their cages in a California sanctuary severely mauled a man in March 2005 before the man's son-in-law shot the animals to death.
Lancelot Link has been called in track down the perpetrators.
Where I used to live in S. Fla. there was a wooded area where quite a few monkeys lived. I heard they were released or escaped from a local circus. Anyway, they had quite a colony in the woods and neighbors fed them and they were somewhat of an attraction. One day a man driving down the highway near the woods hit and killed one of the monkeys. Other monkeys chased the car. Obviously they didn't catch up to the car (lucky for the driver) but it does show they are very social and apparently have a sense of justice.
It's amazing the kind of "backroom" deals ambitious young chimps strike in order to win secrets votes in a power play -- they'll bribe old influential members of a troupe with food, win over females by kissing their babies -- the females in turn pressure males to support their prefered candidate. You go to a human political convention and you see how little we've evolved.
Great book. Read it in an Anthropology class at Michigan. I already knew chimps were intelligent but some of the ways in which their behavior echoes ours were striking.
Muslim chimps? I always suspected as much.
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